by M. D. Cooper
“Look!” Winter pointed at a series of larger ships coming down with a thicker fighter escort. “If they’re landing troops, that’s where the action is.”
“Dammit! Go!” Lana exclaimed. “That’s the courthouse!”
The skycar surged forward, pushing her back in her seat, and she pulled on the harness, hoping that Winter flew with more finesse than he did most things. A moment later, her stomach leapt into her throat as he dove toward the ground.
“Winter!”
“We got some buggers on our tail. Here, take the controls!”
He slid the holoconsole in front of her and turned in his seat, reaching into the back of the vehicle.
Lana barely pulled the car up before they hit the ground, biting back a number of choice words as she threaded a pair of apartment buildings before gaining altitude once more.
“Duck,” Winter said, and Lana complied, still almost getting brained as he pulled something out of the back seat.
“Shit, Winter, is that Dolph?”
“Yeah. Other reason I got the car. I didn’t want to be too far from my baby. Keep it steady…ish.”
With that, Winter rolled down his window and leant out of the skycar, laughing with glee as he unleashed Dolph’s unholy might on the enemy fighters.
Lana laughed at the sight, almost feeling bad for the poor bastards.
Almost.
EXTERMINATE
STELLAR DATE: 02.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Engineering, Barbaric Queen, orbiting Silstrand
REGION: Silstrand System, Silstrand Alliance
Mr. Fizzle Pop ignored Rogers and Ricket as they went about the usual—piloting the Barbaric Queen, shooting down enemy ships. All in a day’s work for a bunch of humans and their complicated ‘issues’.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off the servitor. Mr. Fizzle Pop lay on the catwalk in the corridor between the kitchen and the engine room, and once again, there it was.
Mr. Fizzle Pop’s tail waved and smacked the metal stairs behind him as he scowled. There was no reason for a servitor with no engineering programming to leave the kitchen so often.
Mr. Fizzle Pop’s brow furrowed.
Angrily, he ended the conversation and ran along the catwalk, toward the engine room. It was going to fall to him to fix things.
“WHAT ELSE FRIGGIN NEW? WHY I DO EVERYTHING? I STOP ADMIRAL ON ELEVATOR. I DRIVE CAR. I SAVE SHIP.”
He grumbled as he raced into the engine room and leapt up a set of stairs to a platform. He pranced along, ignoring the smell of oil, gasoline, and some really old beef jerky, searching for the servitor.
He found the metal beast adjusting something in the engine room, but Fizzle Pop didn’t know what it was. He was a great cat, but still just a cat.
Laura was a sweet thing. Mr. Fizzle Pop liked her almost as much as he liked Marge.
He tried not to say ‘I told you so’. Well, he didn’t try very hard.
Mr. Fizzle Pop saw that the servitor was hurrying away from the engine room, so he ran along the catwalk until he came to the container of Bubbs’ colorful blocks that he’d set up for just this purpose. Planting his front paws, the cat kicked back with all his might, knocking the container over, and spilling the contents across the deck.
He turned and peered over the edge, looking down with glee as the servitor slipped on the blocks and slammed into a crate before falling over.
More than a little proud of himself, Mr. Fizzle Pop leapt down and stood on the central body of the servitor.
“DEFEAT BY BLOCKS,” he said proudly and pranced up and down, suddenly noticing that the servitor’s metal skin was getting warmer.
“Move, Fizz!” Ricket yelled as she ran toward him. “Take cover!”
Mr. Fizzle Pop’s ears twitched in annoyance as he jumped away. He watched Ricket unscrew the front panel to reveal that the servitor had a red-hot rope inside.
“Hide, Fizz! Just in case,” Ricket said as she dropped a blob of something silver into the servitor.
He didn’t move, and Ricket swung a hand in his direction.
“Go, it’s going to explode!
He didn’t need to be told a fourth time.
“BOMB!” Mr. Fizzle Pop screamed, and scampered down the corridor to hide behind a support column.
He hunkered down and put his paws over his head, shaking a bit to be so close to danger. But a minute later, when there was no explosion, no scream of death, he peeked his head out.
“NO BOOM?”
“No boom,” Ricket echoed, sitting back on her heels with a sigh. “It was the SC battery’s cooling loop…I switched it to backups just in time. Laura’s sifting through its programming to find out who did this.”
Mr. Fizzle Pop padded back to her and sat by her feet.
“TOLD YOU, ASSHOLE.”
“Yes you did. We won’t ignore you again.” Ricket scratched the top of his head. “So you really didn’t order the servitor?”
“NOPE. WE KEEP IT NOW?”
She shrugged. “If we can remove whatever programming is telling it to kill us, sure. I imagine that then, it’ll be like any other servitor.”
“GOOD. I NEED TUNA.”
Ricket shook her head and sighed for reasons that Mr. Fizzle Pop couldn’t discern.
“If we’re lucky, maybe we can trace its origins and find out who sent it to us.”
Mr. Fizzle Pop wasn’t sure what that had to do with tuna, but thought it might be a good idea.
REVOLUTION
STELLAR DATE: 02.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Stealth ship Isolation, approaching Silstrand
REGION: Silstrand System, Silstrand Alliance
Admiral Matilda sat at one of the comm stations while the major she’d brought onboard for her inspection was on scan. The admiral was focused on coordinating the Silstrand defense fleet—numbering at just over seventy ships in the planet’s nearspace—as they moved to engage the Revolution ships. The major, a woman named Sammy, was working on collating the data that the Isolation’s scan was pulling, trying to work out what the enemy’s tactics were likely to be.
So far as Bubbs could tell, the enemy just planned to hide while their ground attack burned itself out against the planetary defenses.
“Just tell me when I can start shooting at them,” Bubbs grunted, as she slowly moved the ship into a higher orbit, ready to deactivate stealth and turn on shields at any moment.
“Preferably not at all,” Matilda said over her shoulder. “We need this ship intact, not blown to bits.”
“I don’t get blown to bits,” Bubbs replied. “I do the blowing. Er…dammit.”
Major Sammy snorted, and then shook her head. “Shoot, what’s your ship doing, Bubbs?”
“My ship? We’re on my ship. It’s doing what you told me to do.”
“No, the Barbaric Queen.”
Sammy put a view of the cruiseliner-turned-pirate-ship-turned…whatever it was now…plowing through a group of Revolution fighters, blowing them to bits as it gained altitude, headed in the Isolation’s direction.
“Well I’ll be. Looks like this is going to be even less of a fair fight.”
“We don’t need fair, we need winning tactics,” Admiral Matilda muttered. “Actually…OK, I’m talking with someone
named Rogers. Is he trustworthy?”
“Uhh…” Bubbs shrugged. “I guess. You know we’re all pirates, right?”
Sammy snorted, and the admiral groaned. “Stars, yes, do I ever. However…”
Bubbs didn’t like the sound of that. “Admiral? What are you planning?”
“How good are that monstrosity’s shields?”
* * * * *
“They want us to do what?” Ricket asked, twisting in her reclined seat to get a good look at Rogers. “You said no, right?”
Rogers shrugged. “It’s a good plan. Look at where Bubbs’ scan shows the enemy ships to be. They’re mostly in a single formation in a pocket where there’s little civilian traffic, but still close enough to pick up any ships that make it off Silstrand. But they’ll only be there for a little bit longer. Then their orbit will take them across the lane that drones take to the moon.”
“Why’s it have to be us?” Ricket muttered. “You know, this is why I left the space force, crazy ship-battle shit like this.”
“Try saying that five times fast.” Rogers laughed. “Anyway, I thought you said it was because you wanted all the glory of being a Hand agent.”
“That too. OK, fine. I’ve got everything ready to dump power into the forward shields. Let’s do this thing.”
Ricket watched the main holotank as Rogers turned the Barbaric Queen onto a new heading, boosting for the bulk of the stealthed Revolution ships. He had to track across the planet’s surface for a thousand kilometers, moving until the Queen was over an ocean, so their engine wash didn’t do too much damage.
Then, when they were in position, four hundred kilometers below the Revolution ships, Rogers punched it.
The massive ship shuddered as its engines roared to full power, plasma spikes lancing down through the atmosphere, boiling away clouds as the vessel surged upward.
“Yeeeeeehaw!” Rogers cried out as the ship closed the gap with the Revolution ships, already moving at over fifteen kilometers per second.
Ricket picked the ship out, noting that the Queen would pass within thirty kilometers of the vessel—provided it didn’t move out of the way.
The admiral signed off, and Ricket reset her targeting parameters.
Ricket pursed her lips and nodded.
“Hold your course, Rogers,” Ricket said as the Queen continued to surge toward the Revolution ships, all of which were holding steady, much to Ricket’s surprise.
“We doing something fun?”
“Yeah, I’m going to blow their flagship out of the sky.”
Rogers’ mouth formed an ‘O’ and he nodded silently, his eyes growing even more glassy as his brow furrowed with concentration.
Stars…I hope I can finally get him to remove his crazy link to this ship once this is all over.
The ship reached the optimal firing location, and Ricket unleashed everything the Queen had on the Revolution flagship—which was still cloaked.
The liner-turned-marauder’s three dozen beams streaked across the twenty kilometers of space that separated the two ships—closer than any sane pilot would fly—and tore into the enemy vessel.
The Revolution captain must have figured out was happening just as Ricket fired, because just as the first beams struck, the enemy’s shields came up, flickering to life as directed energy weapons cut into its hull.
Before the full umbrellas came up, the cruiser’s shields died, and explosions burst from the hull, spewing plasma and debris into space as the Queen blasted past.
“Boooyah!” Rogers shouted. “Suck it!”
Ricket didn’t have time to join in before the holo lit up with incoming weapons fire from the rest of the enemy fleet. Hundreds of beams splashed across the Queen’s shields, draining the SC batteries and straining the reactors in a matter of seconds.
“Shit!” Rogers cried out as he cut the engine’s thrust to let the shields envelope the entire vessel. “My girl!”
“She’ll hold,” Ricket said, unable to hide the worry from her voice. “She’ll hold.” Truth be told, she hadn’t expected nearly all of the revolution ships to open fire on them in retaliation.
But the strike on the flagship had served its purpose. Nearly every one of the enemy ships had fired, breaking stealth and directly exposing themselves to the SSF’s orbital scan and targeting systems.
The ships were traveling at over seventy thousand kilometers per hour, trailing streams of plasma and forming ionized clouds in their wakes as they came within optimal range and unleashed their full fury on the enemy armada.
The SSF decimated the Revolution ships, beams and missiles hitting them from below as orbital defense platforms pivoted and rained kinetics down on the ships from above.
It was over in a matter of minutes. The Revolution Fleet was utterly defeated, reduced to nothing more than a plasma-laced debris field.
“And that,” Ricket brushed her hands together as the Queen’s heat dispersion systems threw emergency warnings and deployed the ship’s cooling arrays. “Is that.”
Rogers just shook his head, stroking his console. “It’s OK, girl. It’ll be OK.”
NOT AGAIN!
STELLAR DATE: 02.23.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near the federal buildings, Silstrand City, Silstrand
REGION: Silstrand System, Silstrand Alliance
Kylie had finally fought her way through the Revolution soldiers that had flooded the streets around the courthouse. Rounding a corner, she came to a boulevard where the fighting had been intense, but now all that was left were some bodies and gear.
And a hoverbike!
She raced toward the Silstrand PD bike and found that it was still activated. A moment later, she was racing down the street, checking after Paul and Alberta.
Ahead, she spotted an intersection and asked Marge,
Kylie twisted the grip, picking up speed as she banked around the corner, clamping her knees on the bike as it laid down flat around the bend.
Kylie hoped Marge was right as they came into view of Burbank Field. They blew past the perimeter trees and onto the baseball diamonds. Ahead, the shuttle’s thrusters came alive, and it started to rise into the air.
Damn, Kylie thought. She’d have to settle for higher.
She punched the a-grav systems, and the bike l
eapt into the air, on a trajectory for the ship’s port-side airlock. It was closing rapidly, and she was running out of time.
Kylie stood on the seat of the hoverbike and jumped. Arms outstretched and heart in her throat, she barely caught the lip of the door and heaved herself up, rolling into the shuttle with only seconds to spare.
She was still on her side when she saw Alberta bringing her rifle to bear, and she rolled out of the way and onto her knees, grabbing at the rifle’s barrel as the woman fired off a series of pulse blasts that bounced around the inner airlock’s enclosed space.
The concussive waves made Kylie feel like vomiting, but she didn’t let go. Instead, she used her grip on the weapon to pull herself upright. Once on her feet, she twisted the weapon from Alberta’s grasp and then grabbed the woman’s wrist and twisted her arm around, pushing her face into the bulkhead.
“You won’t take us alive,” the woman grunted. “We came here prepared to die.”
“Then you’re already done,” Kylie retorted, grabbing the woman’s hair to slam her face into the bulkhead again.
“It’ll never be over. Not while Paul Rhoads lives!”
“Wrong!” Kylie gritted her teeth. “The fleet will be destroyed. Your fighters, all of your people. Is it really worth all this?”
“Yes!” Alberta’s eyes shone bright as she twisted her head around to stare at Kylie with a zealot’s rage. “In Paul, all things are possible. Our cause will never truly be dead!”
“You just have a few ships left, Silstrand is taking control of the Fringe. You’ll never win!”
“I’ve already won. You just don’t know it yet.”
The woman was beginning to seriously piss Kylie off. She pulled her arm back, ready to do more than punch her.
“Kylie,” Paul warned, appearing at the airlock’s inner door. “Don’t. It’s not her fault. She was taught to follow us. Father, me. She’s been nothing but a loyal servant.”
Kylie glanced at Paul and then back at Alberta. She saw the dedication in Alberta’s face. If she wouldn’t stop trying to rescue Paul, if people like her wouldn’t stop following him, there was only one way to end it, but Kylie didn’t know if she could go through with it.